Slashdot Mirror
New Sony Minidisc Players
Andy_R writes "Sony's has announced it's new new range of Hi-MD players at the CES show. The range of players (which should hit the shops in April) will start below $200 for a device that can function as a USB hard drive as well as storing a claimed 45 hours of music. The twist is that the data is stored on a new type of removable 1Gb media, a development of the minidisk format, with blanks costing about $7 each. The BBC have some more details including backwards compatibility with old-style minidisks and an ominous mention of 'built-in copyright protection' but I can't find anything on Sony's official site yet." Another reader reader submitted some pictures and specifications (pdf).
I mean, who would buy one if it doesn't come in fruity colors?
The reason I got a HDD mp3 player was because I was tired of carrying media around with me. mp3 CD players can be had for less than $100 for a good one. The media for this thing doesn't hold much more than a CDRW, and each "disc" costs about as much as a spindle of CDRWs. Couple that with the fact that in order to get the capacity of a 20G HDD mp3 player, you'd wind up spending just as much. And carrying discs around. Then add in DRM, in typical Sony fashion. Screw that.
I predict minidisc will continue to be Sony's ed-headed stepchild.
I do not understand why the MD format is still around and Sony releases a new player if there are mp3 players for the same price which can carry much more music for less weight...
I always thought of MiniDisc medium as the potential to replace the floppydisk. Sort of a wet dream for MO medium in common use. Lack of a drive to read/write to MiniDiscs as computer storage, high prices, and availability of writable CD's killed this one, but i wouldn't be suprised if sony is able to jump on it with a 1gb format.
SIGERR: laziness exceeds quota
I wonder how many people are turned off of personal digital audio players by the compromised sound quality of lossy codecs? The price per megabyte isn't nearly so attractive for those that prefer lossless quality.
When MiniDisc was new (and expensive), manufacturers targeted audiophiles while the advertising emphasized custom mixes and sound quality (even though ATRAC is also lossy). With "MP3 players," the emphasis is usually on quantity, not quality. Being able to accomodate realtime filters like DFX might be a way to find some middle ground.
I realize that most consumers either tolerate or are unaware of the fidelity loss, hence the continued dominance of the now inferior MP3 format. Still, I think that in order for this market to grow more quickly, it should educate consumers about the options available to them with these devices: CD quality if you want it, or OGG (etc.) if you want more tracks per MB.
YEEESH, I was wondering when Sony was going to get off of their butts and use the minidisc as a portable storage device. I know they had some data storage devices based off the minidisc, but the storage capacity was pretty low (sub 200 meg) and VERY expensive. As long as they don't fudge the product like their first 'mp3' players, they oughta have a real winner on their hands.
for an Asian, Linux based system which uses DVDs, CDs or hard disks, and which sell by the bucketload for 70 UKP or $130 or whatever.
Finally being able to use MDs as removable media is really great. I remember hearing about a drive for the old MDs that was intended for using them as data storage, but I've never seen one.
These new MDs coul be a viable replacement for CD-roms, but only if they aren't bogged down with DRM. A physically small, 1GB disc in a protective caddy. It's almost too good to be true.
Eat the rich.
I use my MiniDisc player like an old tape recorder... You know "note to self." It makes it nice to be able to put in track marks and fast forward to relevent spots in the recording.
You might be seeing my old MD pop up on eBay soon... hehehe.
Why are you always such an ass??!!
You would cream your pants over iPods, another restricted and proprietary device, while Sony's is evil?
Typical doubletalk from slashdot editors. The nice shiny things we like are good, the nice shiny things we don't like are bad.
Hypocrisy at its finest.
Adding the capabilities to store other files on it like a USB hard drive is nice, but for less than 200 bucks, you can get yourself a 200gb USB hard drive/enclosure.
What do you think, Mac, Linux compatible?
Conserve Oil, Recycle, Boycott Walmart
The only complaint I currently have about my minidisc is the drm technology on it now. While you can copy any media to your minidisc using the supplied software (and any other software I've seen works the same way), you can only copy the media back onto the pc it was checked out from. If your pc crashes, then you're pretty much out of luck, and you better hope that minidisc lasts.
This is great news! I have always been a fan of the minidisc format but in recent years it has lost ground to flash-memories used in mp3-players, despite it's obvious benefits (really low cost per megabyte) and Sony's efforts to make the format more modern (such as 32x and 64x speed transfers via USB introduced via NetMD). I hope and think this new format has a chance of being able to turn the table once again!
Intel announces 4004C CPU
Microsoft announces Windows 98TE
Apple announces Apple IV
etc. etc. etc.
Flourescent (adj): smelling like ground wheat.
I wonder how many people are turned off of personal digital audio players by the compromised sound quality of lossy codecs?
Probably somewhere between 1-100 people I would imagine.
Bite my shiny metal... oops... Nevermind!
At $7/GB, that's quite expensive. CD-Rs are usually free with a rebate, and store nearly a GB for $0.07 otherise. CD-RWs are in the same price neighborhood. Mini-DVDs would pack much more, and would be a lot cheaper than $7/GB.
Why doesn't Sony give up on this technology? Optical discs are the way to go, with flash cards being a good enough technology for the rest. This is like re-incarnating the Betamax.
Besides, you can already get 1GB MP3-playing drives in the size of a keychain, great for jogging or sneaking in class. Sony's are much bigger, being about 3/4 the size of a CD player.
as long as it abides by the USB Storage standard, it should work.
minidisc is now out of date so i think this is Sony's last push before resigning the format to the bin (along with their other failed formats)
also the hours of music quoted are for 44kbps music files using their lossy ARTRAC (remember it throws away 85% of the data) perhaps if they quoted MB storage space instead of this latest consumer scam of quoting songs (iPod and Jobs did the same) but not bitrate (hiding that in the small print)
all in all MW radio probably sounds better than a 44k ARTRAC file
sorry Sony , your media formats always suck, try concentrating on better quality hardware and stop trying to peddle your proprietry memory sticks, betamax, minidisc failures
Man, I hate moving. Each time, I have to lug my boxes of hundreds of CD's, it's just ridiculous. Thankfully my new iPod has changed all that.
So I ask, isn't this a step backwards? A 1GB disc for $7 seems like a good deal, but a HD-based digital music player with 40GB is already available... let's do the math.
[$7 (per disc) x 40 (GB)] + $200 (player) = $480
Which, while just over half the cost of a 40GB iPod at the moment, hardly seems worth it given the lack of convenience. Am I missing something? Why move back to a removable storage based system, something we've been moving away from for the last decade?
Any news on the possibility that this is the same media that the PSP will be using?
You can't take the sky from me...
That's interesting. I'm open to correction here, but I thought that the point of MP3 was that it eliminated all the stuff that the human ear couldn't pick up. Surely it can't be an 'inferior' format just because it doesn't keep everything? Or am I missing something?
Drill baby drill - on Mars
4) Copyright Protection Technology
To prevent an illegal copying of digital content, "Hi-MD" incorporates OpenMG and MagicGate technology, already adopted in Memory Stick and Net MD for content management to ensure that music content stored on a "Hi-MD" disc will be encrypted. "Hi-MD" also conforms to the Serial Copy Management System (SCMS).
It's called a CD player with mp3 support. It uses super-cheap recordable media that is compatible with all kinds of machines. The storage size is only .7 gig, but that is close enough.
i have many friends that use MD for the "convenience" factor... i never saw it but, i can appreciate it...
MiniDisks stay clean a lot better than CDs, and with the RW capabilities there, you can continue to add/remove songs and the like... MDs are smaller than CDs, and come in cool colors.
i dunno, improving the MD won't help anyone who has already adopted the format and with HDD MP3 players becoming so huge (iPod and the like), i doubt there will be any new adopters for the format... but if you weigh it all out, someone who travels alot (and has the input on their car reciever) MD v.s. CD... MD would win (if i could afford it)
$50ish cheaper, unlimited expansion :up:
(and I'm an ipod+mac user)
There is another article on the NYTimes about this. With Sony coming out with their own format to MP3 called Atrac I'm not sure I'll be interested. I have way too many songs encoded already in MP3 to switch over to some other commercial format.
referencing the above "for less than xxx bucks you can get yourself a xxxgb USB hard drive/enclosure"...
you still
A) need a computer
B) power supply (for most of them, a hassle anyways)
C) driver issues
my mom actually bought a meatloaf minidisc from the store to listen to. she's a COBOL hacker for a university, like some of you. when she's home, the last thing i'd ever see is her using a computer.
if you don't want to deal with a computer, you use a minidisc. it's for normal people. sony is losing their market of people who are afraid to ask their techno-savvy friends for help.
remember when one amongst you had the fast bb connection and burned you collections of mp3 files because the lot of y'all had dialup, or worse, AOL (back when it was known as America OnHold... busy signals, automated tech support). the thing is that technology is being accepted by the people who don't care to know how it works or what it does as long as their tunes are available and under control.
SIGERR: laziness exceeds quota
They're still good high-quality audio recorders, but they're being quickly superceded by lossless digital solutions.
I've heard of radio stations using MDs to record phone conversations... I mean, if you're going to be interviewed on the phone, you'd receive a courier package with an MD recorder, you then conduct the interview on the phone, recording to the MD. You then return the MD, and the station has a high-quality audio of both sides of the conversation which they can play on the air.
Other applications I've heard of were bootlegging from rock concerts, stuff like that.
I am almost astonished to see Sony still barking up the removable media tree. It's good to have an alternative to hard drive based players but I really can't see who the uptake is going to be aimed at. Anyone wanting music with instant access is surely going to buy into the ipod style player or CD walkman for those without computers. If Sony thinks that they're going to sell pre-recorded music on these discs, they must be mad. With each disc holding only 1 Gig, you'll still have a bag full of disks to break and lose. MD struggled as a format in it's early days due to people simply not needing another format and I think this may just be a format too far. If Sony could make the whole thing high resolution, they could replace DAT in the professional arena but I think this will flop as a consumer good.
The original MD codecs were not anywhere near CD quality. It wasn't until they released their 4th rev of their encoding format did it start getting close to even a MP3 in quality. Their biggest selling points originally were that it sounded better than a cassette, the media was recordable, and it's small. Right before CDRs became so damn cheap, they actually had me thinking of buying one. I'm glad I resisted their last big marketing push a few years back. It's a shame they're always a day late and a dollar short.
Their Magic Gate DRM simply doesn't let you make a digital copy of something that's already a digital copy (via Optical in/out). They only let you make one digital copy of an Analog source as well.
Computer technology is a series of advancements going from one technology to another until specific issues are solved. For the next two years (and past couple) the problem has been small portable storage.
(Case in point, an average $60 video card can drive a higher resolution, and higher refresh rate than most monitors can now support. Video is a solved technology, especially in light of the issues of the past -- EGA, monochrome high resolution)
I'm seriously jonesing because I can't justify the $200+ a 1gb+ device would cost *cough* iPod mini *cough*. On the other hand, I've got a spool of blank cd-r's and a _$30_ cd/mp3 player that'll play them.
So, 640 mb per $0.05 disk, and $30 for the player and a total library of 22 Gb (12 Gb of which I'll never EVER listen to) it's going to take a LOT of improvement in data density/cost to justify another device purchase.
"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
Ouch! That sucks. The new discs are magneto-optical just like the old ones, which makes them ideal for archival use. But with that DRM you wouldn't be able to back anything up onto them.
> I was tired of carrying media around with me
Actually I prefer disc-based players, simply because I get tired of listening to the same music over and over again. With the same stuff on the drive for a long time (and even if it's lots of it), I'm unhappy. The advantage of a disc player is that you can swap the whole collection for a new one. Not a single one of those over-listened tunes remain. It's difficult to do that with a 20GB HD, even when you try hard.
That's why I favor disc players, although I'm rather a CD-R fan than MD. Actually I would love to see a DVD-R based player, but those are still to come.
you cannot beat the reliability of a magneto-optical drive (essentially what a minidisc format functions as). i don't trust an unprotected cdrom disc with my data for more than a few minutes, and a protected one will degrade over a few years. some of my early mp3 backup discs have already "faded" with time, despite being kept in their oldschool caddy trays.
SIGERR: laziness exceeds quota
I use my Sony Net-MD player with a condenser mic to make field recordings. The only problem with Sony and it's "Copyright Protection" is that it doesn't allow you to transfer audio over the USB connect FROM the MD player TO the computer.
So basically, any recordings you make need to be transfered analog into your computer's sound card.
There have been petitions in the past from the MD users community demanding Sony allow bi-directional USB transfers, but because Sony has it's music label/tech world schizophrenia, it's never going to happen.
Right now, the only thing that is reasonably priced and does do this is the Nomad 3 from Creative, but I want something with better A/D conversion than what it has.
The iPod supports a couple of lossless formats.
...And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me." - Martin Niemoeller (1892-1984)
I have a Sony Mini-Disk player. I never use it. Instead, I use my Sony CDRW MP3 player.
Why?
1. The CDRW holds a LOT more music.
2. The CDRW media is cheaper.
3. The CDRW plays MP3 AS IS.
4. The CDRW media is a lot faster than the Mini-Disk medai.
5. The CDRW does not require any special software.
Play MP3s as is (no re-encoding them to your own crappy custom DRMed format) and get rid of that GOD-AWFULL software that comes with the Mini-Disk. Honestly, that software my Mini-Disk player came with was amongst the worst I have *EVER* used.
Do the above, and I might consider another one. Until then, stick with your ipods and CDRW players.
Bryan
Encode a CD in mp3 at 32 kbps. Now listen to it and tell me it's only eliminated "stuff that the human ear couldn't pick up". Lossy codecs (mp3, aac, ogg, mpeg, jpeg, etc etc) work by removing some data from the original. Which data they remove, and how much, is dependent on the particular codec and some "quality" setting (usually quantified as a target bit rate). Taking mp3 as an example, as you move the bit rate up it gets closer and closer to the original source. You'll never get it exactly the same, due to the reencoding there will always be some differences, but the vast majority of people would be hard pushed to tell the difference between CD and MP3 at, say, 320kbps using average an hifi. MP3 is generally considered an inferior format to the newer ones (WMA, AAC, OGG etc) because at any given bit rate it sounds worse than them. This difference is most pronounced at lower rates - OGG is clearly better than MP3 at 96kbps for example, but it's less obvious at 320.
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
The only segment I know that has embraced minidisks is live theater where having the music for your show on a minidisk is a defacto standard. Check out this google search. Maybe they will slowly upgrade to the new format.
Are there any other segments where minidisks are standard?
Compression standards such as MP3/OGG and others are lossy compressors therefore some quality degradation is to be expected. Most compression schemes will attempt to do as you mentioned which is to remove information that human ear cannot process anyway. But when you restrict the compressor to a specific bitrate such as 128kbits/sec then the compressor will unfortunately remove more information from the original signal that will be detectable by the human ear. You can play with this by compressing the same song at two different birates such as 64kbits/sec and 256kbits/sec. Playing those two samples one after the other will show the difference and all the loss that the lower bitrate is causing.
:-)
But sound quality is subjective like many things. Therefore if MP3s at 128kbits/sec sound alright to you then good an MP3 Player costing less will be perfect for you needs. If you are a more demanding listener perhaps you will need to investigate other Players such as MiniDiscs,CDs or perhaps DVD-Audio or even SACD althought I don't think any company as made portable players out of those standards ?
alp!
Sony's launching a new online pay music service. I wonder all of a sudden if this new service will be Atrac only (which has been around for awhile, contrary to a couple other posts I've seen here). Would they be that stupid with it?
I still want the Hi-MDs. =^)
Please, do not read this sig
The Nomad Jukebox 3 has an optical line in. New firmware's made recording more seamless, but it's a crapshoot with JB3s; for some, they're bulletproof. For others (like me), the bastard locks up too much to endorse it.
Too bad DATs are still egregiously priced.
Easy does it!
This comment has been submitted already, 276865 hours , 59 minutes ago. No need to try again.
I adopted MD very early (still have my MZ-1!) because I hated tapes and was tired of lugging my CDs around. And for about 10 years, they were the greatest thing on wheels. I have a portable player, a car changer and a home deck. (All of these before they started with this DRM nonsense.)
And yet, I can't get excited about this. It seems obvious to me that hard drive MP3 players are the way to go. The price is much lower, the quality is nearly as good, the portability is similar, and about the only thing you can't do that you can do with MD is swap the HD out. But when you've got a 40GB HD, who cares? I think this won't really take off. It's not like Apple where MD users will jump on this to upgrade all their gear just because it's MD. I think MD served a purpose when it came out, but I honestly think it has been supplanted by better, cheaper technology.
Your mileage may vary, but mine is constant.
I've been looking into getting one of the newer minidisc/mp3 players anyway, so getting one that holds 1gb is great for me.
Why is the minidisc great?
* - You can quickly put music and mp3's on it (32x write on the current gen ones).
* - Current gen discs hold 5 hours worth of music a disk. The newer discs will hold approx 50 hours.
* - They are rewritable.
* - The discs can't be scratched
* - You can use md players as pocket voice recorders
* - Small size
* - More reliable than hard-drive solutions
* - Less access time / less skipping than cd/dvd solutions.
Sure, the media costs a little bit more than a cd or a dvd, but it's designed for those who want to quickly throw a bunch of songs on a device to go. Sure, you can backup your whole collection onto a series of discs too...but if you're looking to have your whole collection in your hands and you hate media...yeah, you need a hd player.
Like the orriginal minidisc, this will be a solution that a niche audience will love. Personally, I will use it exclusively. And, if nothing else, it gives you a third format option...ATRACK.
Wise men say, "Forgiveness is divine, but never pay full price for late pizza."
It'll have a home right next to my Betamax player and my Sony Superstation tape backup drive. Right across from all my memory stick components and my lovely SACD player. I already had minidisc and long play minidisc and their last PC mindisc drive (I was on of the 5 proud owners!), now I can add HD minidisc.
Sony is like the Voltron of crappy proprietary hardware.
yeah really, most idiots can't even tell the difference on their shitty headphones.
Optical line in doesn't mean a thing when you're recording from a analog microphone.
Those analog signals must be sampled to digital somehow, and the quality of the Analog->Digital convertor matters. Especially when it comes to recording off of microphones.
I could have sworn Sony's next format would be the UMD used in the Playstation Portable... Did I miss something?
I guess MD is popular enough in Japan they needed to make a backwards compatible alternative. Seems kind of strange I think that they didn't use this for the PSP, though.
Yet another media snafu by the big brains at Sony or is this just a blip on the radar as far as World Domination is concerned?
You know, I was watching the film Strange Days on TV last night, the main character was trading data which was stored on Minidiscs.
This reminded me of the scene in the Matrix where Neo hands over some data on a Minidisc.
Minidisc looks like such a cool format, smaller than zip discs - a PC drive bay for them was manufactured however good luck if you want to find one...
With the ability to use for data, and even copy music from your pc to them - they could have wiped the floor with other storage formats... what happened ??
I am cuurent Net-MD user and fan. I use it while at the gym. the thing was cheap enough not to worry about it breaking or the like. and i've been a fan of being able to swap maedia, so that rules out some (lot) of mp3 players.. factor int he cost of media for a md player vs cost of media for sd/cf/sm/etc, its a much more attractive picture. also due to the size of the media, keeping a dozen or two md's in the bag isnt bad. nor is it a problem the fact it uses it own file format. it doesnt disturm my mp3's, just makes anotehr file in its altrac format in another location. inshort i find its the best of both worlds, small light, portable, cheap, and easy media.
While I agree that MD is behind the times, I do a lot of recording on minidisc. The battery life with some of their NetMD models can't be beat (8+ hours of record time) and the Atrac compression is pretty decent sounding (good enough for radio production and most music production).
Some MP3 recorders can record in uncompressed Wav format, but I have yet to see one that can do that without destroying the batteries in the process. Maybe there is a good flash-rom recorder that is broadcast quality that I'm not aware of. (Please post here if you know of one.) However, all of the HD based MP3 players that can record (that I've seen) they either have terrible quality for a source recording (usually the max is 160 kbs MP3 which is fine for downloads, but not pro audio) or you get 15 minutes of recording time on standard batteries when trying to record sound in uncompressed Wav format.
Now if SONY makes these players able to record for extended periods of time with 1GB of storage for $7 as opposed to several hundred for 1GB of fast (32X) flash media, I'll ante up. MD has been the most reliable recording format for use in the field IMO. The media is also damn tough to beat up. In fact, the discs will last much longer in storage than CD-Rs.
Yes this is a niche, but if SONY doesn't ignore this niche, they might have some more buyers. Recently they've been removing the mic inputs on their lower end consumer MD players. I hope there is a version of this with a mic-in.
- The Audio Guy
"I wonder how many people are turned off of personal digital audio players by the compromised sound quality of lossy codecs? The price per megabyte isn't nearly so attractive for those that prefer lossless quality."
Find out how many people in the world own $1000 isolation headphones. There's your answer. Seriously, in a setting where most people use portable music players (outdoors, in a car, in the gym, etc), encoding loss is the least of your sound quality problems. Room noise, cheap headphones, and low-quality ADC chips are all worse degraders of sound quality than well-done mp3/atrac3/ogg encoding.
Well thats all great and dandy but sony still does see the need to post drivers for the mac. For their units... Asf!@ Whats the point..
Add an 'e' or an 'ne' to the end of any Masculine Declension word and it is almost always a slight at them in one manner or another.
I've wanted an inexpensive portable method for recording live bands in CD quality (44100KHz) sound for some time now. I never jumped on the mini-disc bandwagon because of a lack of this feature. Now, they offer a new mini-disc standard and still fall short of CD quality recording?!? As a recording artist, this just plain sucks. Guess I'll keep waiting. sigh...
/.ing. If you're not interested in progressive rock, don't even bother clicking. ;-)
Oh, yeah... forgot the obligatory band link. I need a good
To add to the above:
Although CD quality IS much higher than MiniDisc, it's really quite unnoticable - MiniDisc is THE standard for theatre where I live. Not only does my college use it, but so do the two major professional theatres. It's grown in popularity in the theatre world because of it's ultra quick access times, and ease of looping when compared to CD. Of course, this is using a professional MiniDisc deck, going through professional EQ units - you won't get that kind of quality on a portable.
Finally, the Sony Professional MiniDiscs are virtually indestructable (the casing being metal, instead of plastic)...
Interesting point. Thanks.
Interesting. Thanks guys.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
The US portable audio market is dominated by HDD/Flash players, MD has never become a big player in the US except for audiophiles and digital recording. It is a big thing in Japan, I was there recently and MD is the primary portable audio hardware. From Sony's report they are expecting to ship 8M units of the physcal year almost half going to the Japanese market. So before you dismiss MD as an also ran, there is a large market. For DRM issues, the format does not allow second generation digital copies to be made, that means that you can't copy music digitally from MD. Its not actually that big of a deal since most MD recorders/players do not have digital outputs, then again neither do most HDD/flash based players.
D6 63 0D 70 89 81 BB 8E 7B 7C 5F 5D 54 EA AB 73
I think the more important underlying issue is that we slashdotted Sony's web site (the one with the pictures). Seriously, this is Sony we're talking about here... WTF?
Beat is Sony... Beat it hard! Break it's fucking neck dude.
Sony is late and wrong on everything MD. having bought a MD recorder back in the day (why did they even bother making MD that could only play and not record?) i've always felt it could have been so much better. First of all, it takes however long the track is to transfer it too and from the computer or other device. Maybe it's different with the optical in/out, but i never had anything to plug that into. If they had made it a dual functioning device to begin with (ie, audio read/write AND data read/write with no data loss) it would have been more well recieved. they wouldn't have even needed to allow for both types on the same disc.
How cool would it have been to use a MD recorder as a portable tape drive? i think it would have been very cool. Small, protected discs with decent storage capacity.
Sony over-specialized this product to death. It was nice to use to record an occasional concert, and to record myself and friends musical sessions. It just could have had so many more uses.
You almost had it right, Sony. I'd still consider buying something new and less specialized (no DRM, no one-way USB, better transfer methods in general) from someone if it was able to use minidiscs as the media. I'm still wishing I or someone else was able to do some hardware hack to make the original MD recorders more functional along these terms.
The media cost for MD wouldn't be so bad if it had other uses such as data backup. how much to tapes cost these days? a MD is what, maybe a dollar each? expensive compared to CD's but cheaper than tapes i imagine.
O'WONDERWe're working on it.
well, if it could play MP3 and other formats that is, to bad.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
FAT, eh?
Wonder if they have to pay Microsoft for a licence.....
Metal Cased MDs?! Give me a URL! I can't find anything on google.
I did buy some (expensive) Sony pro MDs that were all white once... They were supposed to have better lubricants on the magnetic side of the disk, and some other advantages... I can't remember actually using them for anything and noticing a difference.
But a metal case! That would be awesome.
--
lds
"Hi-MD" uses the FAT file system, making it possible to use...
Furthermore, as portable, rewritable PC media, "Hi-MD" complies with USB format's Mass Storage Class
What do you think, Mac, Linux compatible?
Absolutely.
Guess what? EVERY USB Mass Storage Device uses FAT for storage. If you can connect a digital camera to it, you can attach this to it, because all digital cameras use FAT. That's how those USB readers can work, BTW... standardized storage format...
I am disrespectful to dirt! Can you see that I am serious?!
umm...Mac and Linux can read and write to ft partitions.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
A new MD format might have been attractive before PC and Macs were real Digital Hubs, but introducing more incompatible (unless you have a Viao) hard/software or marginal improvements in technology doesn't get me interested.
I did buy into MDs around '98 for portable audio and comp disks. I loved it then. But now it is far easier to arrange a tracks on a computer and burn them out to CD (for the car or friends) or MP3 player. Plus with MP3 (in the generic sense) doubling as removable storage, Sony is way to late and more than a few dollars short.
Additionally being a Mac person this announcement is worth less than the paper it was printed on. Grumble, grumble, NetMD, grrr, check in/check out bullshit, ricken, fricken.
Hello to the new memory stick. Yawn.
As it happens, this rejects the following songs:
ABBA - "Money, Money, Money"
COOL MO D - "Mo' Money"
PINK FLOYD - "Money"
PET SHOP BOYS - "Opportunities (Let's Make Lots Of Money)"
BEATLES - "Money"
PRIMITIVE RADIO GODS - "Standing Outside A Broken Phone Booth (With Money In My Hand)"
SUPERGRASS - "In It For The Money"
PSYCHEDELIC FURS - "All That Money Wants"
RAGGA TWINS - "Money"
DIRE STRAITS - "Money For Nothing"
WONDERSTUFF - "It's Yer Money I'm After Baby"
PATTI SMITH - "Free Money"
LIVING COLOUR - "Money Talks"
LOU REED - "No Money Down"
BIG PIG - "Money God"
PRINCE - "Money Don't Matter"
PINK FLOYD - "Money"
STEVE VAI - "Dirty Cash"
STYLE COUNCIL - "Money Go Round"
TOM WAITS - "Til The Money Runs Out"
CYNDI LAUPER - "Money Changes Everything"
FLYING LIZARDS - "Money"
NEIL YOUNG - "Loose Change"
NENEH CHERRY - "Money Love"
SMASHING PUMPKINS - "Pennies"
AC/DC - "Money Talks"
DONNA SUMMER - "She Works Hard For The Money"
MORPHINE - "Murder For The Money"
THE CHURCH - "Blood Money"
MICHAEL JACKSON - "Money"
EVERCLEAR - "Heartspark Dollarsign"
SPINAL TAP - "Gimme Some Money"
PRETENDERS - "Brass In Pocket"
PUFF DADDY - 'It's All About the Benjamins'
Plus many, many more. I cannot recommend this product in its current form, as this is unresonable copy protection.
Strangely, REM's - "It's the End of the World as We Know It (and I Feel Fine) plays perfectly. Hmm. Nothing beats apathy.
From the data sheet:
With the introduction of "Hi-MD," Sony is poised to meet the demands of a growing broadband era...
then later they mention the speed:
and transfering data from a PC to the disc at 48kbps with ATRAC3plus
Well where is the "broadband" coming in here? Ugh... I don't want to relive the days of downloading music over my dial-up connection...
Only if the device itself can read and write long filenames.
They only let you make one digital copy of an Analog source as well.
Bands have complained that the SCMS prevents them from getting digital music that they performed off their DATs and MDs. Does Sony do this to protect established songwriters from having their songs covered by local bands without permission?
I use a portable minidisk recorder for recording practice sessions and band gigs - *far* superior to tape, and easier to interface than a DAT.
What i'd really like to know (can't glean from the links mentioned) is if i can directly access tracks recorded in the field from the PC interface - if so, that would be a significant advantage over the current generation of recorders.
I am not a number - I am a free man!
If these new ones can store 45 hours of music on a single disk at $7 then for $28 you have as much storage as a new mini ipod. For another $28 you have double the storage.
With a $7 disc, you can lend a disc to a friend, they can do what they please with it then give it back. In the meantime you still have your music player and your other music.
Blank minidiscs used to be expensive. Now you can pick them up for about 50p each. The same will happen with these new discs. Early adopters will always pay extra.
I suspect you're from North America given how quickly you dismissed the minidisc. Whenever I get on a bus or train here in the UK I will invariably see one or two people listening to minidisc players. Those who have used them seem to like them. I'm sure Sony know that too.
For some reason, Slashdot editors neglected to include the fact that you can use this to store data as well as music now (I was the 'Another reader' referred to in that post with the real links).
:)
The unit can be used with either the 300MB (standard MD media) or 1GB (the new Hi-MD format) disks and draws power from USB so that the music player becomes a portable USB storage device. No idea whether it supports the USB mass storage standard or whether it has its own whacky way of doing things, but it's something that should have been possible from the start.
Any music stored on the device will be visible but protected and the device won't play standard music files if they're simply transferred to the data area. You still need to use SonicStage (the Sony equiv of iTunes) to transfer your files, although there are a few thirty party tools around (such as RealOne) which use the same drivers but sport a much nicer (and stable) interface.
Needless to say, a 1GB disk should be plenty for keeping documents and such around, perhaps even a bootable linux distro such as Knoppix can be adapted for this, assuming it supports standard USB mass-stroage. Now that'd be cool
I never thought I'd see the day of a FP troll in down home St-Henri Quebecois!!!
Great stuff calisse!
The first MD Data drives were significantly slower than 1x CD. Iomega Zip killed them with throughput equivalent to 6x CD.
why would this be any better than a dvdrw? portability? is taht the only reason? like everybody else has already said, youve got hd mp3 players for far less $ with more storage and youve got dvdrw if you just want it for storage. i honestly fail to see a reason why this would succeed. also, it doesnt seem to me like there is a big enough market for people who want lossless audio.
use your turn signal! you people act like it's divulging information to the enemy
There was mention of this MD/USB copy protection in the most recent issue of 2600, The Hacker Quarterly.
"...the USB interface was only to be used to "check-out" purchased music from the hard drive to the MD unit. The only permitted function of "checking-in" is to return previously "checked-out" music from the MD to the hard drive, a function that I cannot imagine ever having a use for. Apparently, Sony did not include a truly digital USB/MD option in order to discourage piracy (Sony is, after all, a major publisher of music content as well as audio hardware)."
I didn't see anything specifically saying what the copyright measures were, so I hope this helps.
The Hi-MD format not only supports a high-bitrate modern codec (ATRAC3plus 256Kbit/sec) to offer 7 hours and 55 minutes recording on a disc, but we now see the support for standard PCM recording! This will be a BIG HIT with the audiophiles who are dissatisfied with carrying around a DAT walkman with poor battery life and large size who can now replace these items with a tiny Hi-MD unit.
The bootleggers will go ape over this, especially given that it supports audio uploading from anything recorded with the microphone input! Too bad for those who use pre-amps and line-in, however.
Why would we want to buy another set of binders to hold our media? I'm firmly convinced the similar look and feel of CD's and DVD's contributed to DVD's success.
Eventually smaller is not better, but only... smaller.
the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur - A.N. White
This is definately a case of on once-burned, twice shy. Sony is infamous for bringing out new formats that only they support. If that format is successful, you're fine. But if it isn't, Sony will abandon it... and you. Then you have the wonderful prospect of DRM built in by a company that is a member of the RIAA. Sony has the power to influence all the lawsuits and lobbying the RIAA does and from what I can see, I don't think they are our friend, here. So, leap into an unproven format with built-in restriction. Thanks, anyway but I think I'll pass.
Why is sony wasting their time on making minidiscs when the new craze is all about mp3 player. What chance will it stand against Apple's Ipod and the new Mini Ipod.
MonkeysKickAss
MiniDiscs aren't widely available here in the U.S., but when I lived in Europe stores sold minidiscs fairly cheaply (less than 1 USD a disc if I recall correctly). There were the Sony brand ones, which were the most expensive, but there were competing brands as well, such as TDK.
Even though Sony came up with the MiniDisc, other manufacturers make them as well, which makes it quite a bit cheaper.
New 1GB Minidisc = $7
2 700MB blank CD's = 1.4GB = $0.24
I do believe I'll be sticking to CD's if there are no advantages to the minidiscs.
---- "Excuse me. Where's the children's gun section?"
I suspect this'll compete well with the mini-iPods.
Ph-nglui mglw'nafh Gates M'dna wgah'nagl fhtagn.
If it's a first-generation copy, the SCMS bit isn't set on the media it is recorded to (eg, DAT or MD). If you're going to a second digital source and expect to make copies from *that* (i.e. MD -> DAT -> CD) then you're out of luck. Note that no portable unit has digital output (except I believe the original MZ-1 portable recorder released in 1993 which had shocking audio encoding).
:)
However, an easy solution would be to run the digital in to a Creative SB Live Platinum or Audigy Platinum card (you need the digital I/O -or- grab a hoontech third-party optical I/O bracket), disable all internal sounds and analog processing and just run the digital out to your target. Bingo, it strips the SCMS bits like a charm
You can perform uploads of tracks recorded onto the MD via the microphone, however, no mention of whether line-in works the same way (so it's great for bootlegs, but not quite there yet for production or those who are lucky to get soundboard recordings).
Dear Sony,
I don't want your MiniDisc technology anymore. I'm not interested in your proprietary removeable media formats. Miniature hard drives are here to stay.
I've owned 3 MiniDisc recorders in the last 4 years. I thought you were helping me out by putting a USB port on your more recent NetMD devices, but you decided that you can't trust me to upload MY OWN RECORDINGS back to my computer via the USB port. Which has left me in the analog realm, forcing me to plug my recorder into the analog inputs of my sound card to digitize my music. MY MUSIC THAT I RECORDED MYSELF. This is unacceptable in today's all-digital environment.
I will not be purchasing any more of your products in the future. It's not for my lack of trying -- I loved the idea of a small, compact, recording device that I could carry with me anywhere. I bought 3 of them! But now I want more. Now I expect more. I want direct digital USB or Firewire transfers to my computer. And instead of meeting my needs, you've proffered another DRM-crippled, expensive, proprietary format that doesn't do what I want it to.
Thanks, but no thanks. I'll be looking elsewhere for my next recording and playback device.
Sincerely,
A disappointed (former) customer
Yep, you heard right.
:)
These new Hi-MD players support native PCM equal-to-CD-quality recording. Goodbye DAT, hello Minidisc - while DAT offers 48KHz sampling, it is nowhere as small and resilient as the minidisc format which was originally developed for portability as a key design requirement. Plus, battery life on the DAT walkmans rarely exceeds 4 hours in ideal situations.
And if you use the mic input (the specs explicitly mention mic-in so this may not apply to line-in), you can upload your PCM recording at high speed to a PC and master it straight onto a CD.
The Hi-MD is a bootleggers dream
How many people will notice diffrence between high-quality (HQ VBR or 256kbps) Lame encoded MP3 and a CD?
When you have a HDD based MP3 player, you don't need to worry about using low bitrate. With 20GB capacity you can store over 170 hours of music encoded at 256kbps.
I bought a MD player before, it was over priced and the software sucked, so I took it back. However I loved the idea of it, and how small it was. My biggest problem with them though was the lack of capacity, I was told by the sales person that it was the same capacity as a CD, so I assumed 650 MB not the 200 MB that it really is (or somewhere there abouts). Anywho this is perfect, I would by one of these, assuming it would play the MP3 format, and not the Sony format of which I can't recall the name. Neat idea thought.
I realize that most consumers either tolerate or are unaware of the fidelity loss, hence the continued dominance of the now inferior MP3 format.
;-).
There's nothing stopping you from ripping your CDs to 256kbps MP3 format - you determine whether the emphasis is on quantity or quality. Unless you're one of those 1337 audiophile kazaa hounds, in which case you're a walking oxymoron. (Of course, a lot of self-identified audiophiles are not kazaa-hounds as well, in which case the oxy- is dropped
SCO employee? Check out the bounty
Rubbish. It's down to the person who encodes the file, not the playback method!!
I use 96kbit wma files on the move, while my own rips are 192+ mp3, or in the last year or so, the R3mix preset. I down-convert to carry more, as the player is a mobile phone that has cheap headphones and sound hardware. I'm also limited to SD flash media, which is expensive. If I had a different type of device, I'd do it differently.
If you know what you are doing, lossy codecs are fine 99% of the time. Saying mp3 is worse than minidisk is a blatant lie. Maybe if you qualified that with "128kbit/s mp3".
Arent 3"/3.5in disks supported by most CD players?
Do they make DVD+RW in that form factor?
That would hold about the same amount... and a CD
full of MP3s will play for awhile...
Of course they cost 2x/3x more than the CD ones for some reason.
I considered responding to this anonyously since I know that someone will 'troll' me for it, but...
Please consider not only the listeners but the TYPE of material being listened to. The way I figure it is: Say you have someone who pulls up to you in their tricked-out Honda with a stereo playing loud enough to stop most digestive systems. What do you suppose that person's definition of 'quality' is? How 'kickin' the bass is probably since you certainly can't hear anything else!
Somewhere along the line audio fidelity turned from having well balanced highs, mids, and lows to "Dude, I can't FEEL it yet!" Since it is the youth market that Sony and most other consumer electronics companies (well, all but Bose) cater to, this might explain why high fidelity isn't considered a necessity.
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
At least with the current stock of NetMDs you can get around the DRM issues by downloading a Sony product: Sonic Stage.
This was intended only for VIAO users (why they don't offer it to normal MD customers is a question for Sony Music division I'd Assume).
If you can get your hands on this (c'mon you know where cough cough -usenet- cough), you'll be converting and loving the lack of said DRM pickiness that is everywhere in the software that ships with the MDs now.
-JohnnySkidmarks
48kbps? Please...
Even the best codecs (Ogg, MPC) sound like crap at those bitrates.
majority of people would be hard pushed to tell the difference between CD and MP3 at, say, 320kbps using [an] average [...] hifi
Maybe, maybe not. At 128kbps, I can't tell the difference on crappy headphones, and barely notice on the crappy desktop speakers most people have. The real difference isn't the codec, the bitrate, it's the speakers/headphone. At higher bitrates it becomes the sound card, and somewhere it becomes the codec/bitrate. That's why people love it - it sounds fine on their computers/walkmen.
"Sometimes a woman is a kind of religion, she can save your soul & set you free from all your sins" - Bad Examples
since you have it and I'm considering it: how does it deal with high-bitrate VBR mp3s? do they work? I encode my CDs with the 'extreme' lame preset which outputs files that average about 220kbps but with frames up to 320 and as low as 192.
-- the cake is a lie
Looks like the $250 model will do live analog recording... perfect!
The whole reason I bought an MD recorder back in 1999 was so I could record things... rehearsals, shows, etc. And compared to MP3 the ATRAC compression is pretty clean; I've made a few CDs from MD-recorded things and not been bothered by any artifacts or loss of quality (yes there's probably a loss, but nothing I really noticed).
A pocket-sized device which does the same thing with even higher quality would be pretty cool. I'm not interested in hauling my laptop around to random shows.
I'm convinced that the whole MP3 craze is really a plot by AM radio stations to make their comeback. While I am no audiophile, I have never heard an MP3 that compares to my audio cassette recordings off of FM radio in terms of quality. Am I missing something?
I agree, but I have to wonder -- in the PDF, they keep mentioning linear PCM recording at nearly cd quality...
Does that mean they're not able to record 44.1khz x 2 x 16bits? Are they recording at a lower bit rate or resolution??? None of this stands out in the spec sheet....
Of course, the spec sheet reads more of "marketing" than "technical abilities"...
Karnal
umm, maybe like one? hopefully apple will release some nice firmware updates (ie, OGG!). i'd really like to make that huge font for my 40 GB a lot smaller.
His PC's on fire!! //missing my SNES
Why yes I am paranoid! Thanks for asking!
It seems that Sony wanted people to see the MD as a CD replacement (to the point that they even released some music singles on non-recordable MDs). Sure, there were many people 'in the know' (DJs, many people in Europe), but Joe Six-pack was left out in the cold. LP and cassette tape were replaced by the CD for playback, but there was no main-stream replacement for the -recording- capability of tape. Just imagine what the response would have been if MD were widely advertised as the tape cassette replacement: "It's like tape, only better! Clean, clear music like a CD, and you can record to it! Know how tapes can jam and worst of all, wear out in time? Worry no more! Re-record to the MD as many times as you like, blahblahblah." (yeah, I know, technically it's marketting BS, but that exact same marketting BS made it's way onto the box my MD player/recorder -came in- back then, too...)
The 'killer app' for MD was re-recording capability, and here in the US, the MD missed the boat.
Granted, the USB storage ability tempts me. Wonder if the feds. will start seizing MDs labelled 'Trance Mix' now too, when they come for 'hacker' evidence collection... ;)
There's no wrong way, to eat a Rhesus...
The lossy codec isn't so bad, but the one-way-street is a showstopper. I can use minidisc to record practice sessions, but then it's basically lost, because I'd have to play that back through a cheap DAC in order to use the track. If the sony md's had sp/dif output, I wouldn't care about the lossy encoding. It's the analog-only output that pisses me off. (This is MY music you're "protecting". You're violating MY rights when you do that...)
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
The difference in quality between compression formats is negilible compared to other factors in the players-
.WAV at their highest quality settings, but only in a perfectly quiet environoment, and likely only using $$$$ speakers/headphones. Remove the bulky equipment and add some ambient noise, and no one can tell the difference.
First of all, portables are typically used in noisy environments or outdoors, which makes any losses by the compression impossible to hear. A few "golden ears" can tell the difference between ATRAC, MP3 and
More importantly, the quality of analog section of the playback chain- ie the DAC, the headphone amplifier, and most importantly of all, the headphones themselves, affect the sound way more than the digital section. I'm amazed at the number of people who spend $400 on an Ipod, only to use those crap earbuds, when you could get better sound with a 25 year old walkman (or a cheap MP3 player and very low bitrates) and a $50 set of headphones like the sennheiser PX-250 or Koss Portapro.
The main reason people say minidisc sounds better than MP3 is not because its a superiour compression method (do a test with a high quality MP3 setup (LAME, optical/coax output, external DAC, seperate headphone amplifier), and MP3 will win at every bitrate), but because minidisc players have far superior amplifiers and DACs than the cheap MP3 players/soundcards people used to test MP3's.
Some minidisc players sound better than portable CD players, simply because they have better electronics, and this more than make up for the use of lossy compression. And they sound better than virtually all MP3 players- even most of the high priced HD based players typically have poor analog sections (IE done by the DSP/microcontroler/digital engineer on a tight budget (both in terms of money and power consumption) instead of an analog specialist).
Why not spend the advertising budget on upgrading the 25cent opamp or the $2 earbuds bundled with those players?
Get a component MD deck and you get optical in and out. It is only the portable players that lack a digital output. Makes sense when you consider their intended use. They need a way to dump CD's in but are only expected to playback via the headphones.
Democrat delenda est
The main problem is driver support. The NetMD's on the market today are only compatible with PCs because of little or no knowledge of the drivers when it comes to writing to the device. There has been some reverse engineering, OpenNMD, but as of yet, there has been no way to write to the devices. Unless, Sony allows others to build drivers, there will be little or no hope.
Flexible bare-metal recovery for Linux/UNIX
As a storage medium it would be linux compatible. But re-read the .pdf and you learn that, like the iPod, it stores music files in an encrypted form and will only play one in that mutant format. Expect hell to freeze before a legal transfer program appears for Linux/BSD. On the other hand you can expect a Free program to show up on a server in the Free World in a few months. And on the gripping hand expect it to be suppressed about like DeCSS, i.e. everyone will know about it but linking to it will get you a lawsuit.
Democrat delenda est
With "MP3 players," the emphasis is usually on quantity, not quality.
Sure the mp3 players are advertised as such but nothing is stopping me from ripping my cds at 320 kbps and sending them over to my 60 gig nomad zen. If you want higher quality then just rip at such. Myself... i'm happy at 192.
Nonsense. USB Mass Storage is the SCSI layer and has nothing whatsoever to do with the file system. How do you think USB DVD burners could work if they had to use FAT? And do you really think all USB Harddisks have only FAT on them?
USB Mass Storage devices can have any file system, just like any other storage device. The fact that many (but far from all) manufacturers choose to use FAT is for obvious interoperability reasons, not because USB defines it so.
I'm a long time user and I had mixed experiences with MD.
My oldest unit, a japanese Sharp MD, had a very reliable and high quality performance, beating anything available at the time (in terms of price/performance/convenience, remember 8 years ago there weren't many CD burners and DAT/ADAT were too expensive and not very portable). It has S/PDIF, Line In and MIC inputs. The ATRAC codec had a very good psychoacoustic model and better yet, it had forward and backward compatibility with several revisions of itself. My parents are musicians and I'm an engineer, so I know what I'm talking about. I still have this unit, it is a really good piece of hardware. Later I had access to an MD Deck that had S/PDIF output so I could record and edit some live tracks on my computer.
My newest MD, a Sony NetMD unit has also the same inputs (S/PDIF, Line in and MIC), I bought it because it's smaller, has longer battery life, the ATRAC codec is several generations newer and the overall quality is better. I was also hoping NetMD and its applications (OpenMG, Sonic Stage and Simple Burner) would give me a way to upload my live tracks and simply skip the MD Deck stuff, while speeding up the downloads of my tracks.
But NetMD is a piece of crap. Not only the new ATRAC LP2/LP4 are low quality (which is OK for non-audiophiles who listen to MP3s anyway), but the whole OpenMG/NetMD fiasco is completely useless. Here's a little list of the annoying stuff for your reference:
- You can't upload any tracks you recorded from other inputs.
- You can't edit on the MD the stuff you downloaded with Sonic Stage.
- You can't download in plain ATRAC (only LP2 or LP4) from Simple Burner.
- The DRM locks the tracks you downloaded to your computer. If your computer crashes, your MDs can't be erased or edited.
- The protocol is obscure, proprietary and Sony has rejected petitions to solve the above-mentioned issues.
I can understand (but not accept) Sony feels the need for DRM with all the music pirates out there, but I'm not an MP3 user (there are better formats for me), I don't download music from Kazaa or whatever, I don't buy pirate media, and as a legitimate user I feel I'm the only one screwed by this DRM fallacy. The new Hi-MD would have me interested by the specs, but either they change this attitude or iPod and friends will definitely kill MD for good. The USB Mass Storage compatibility is definitely a good step, but it doesn't clarify if the unit will be able to play the music you download this way or if it will only play the MagicGate encoded stuff.
- Otaku no naka no otaku, otaking da!!!
This explains why I'm turned off to concepts like iTunes. Sure I'll download the occasional one hit wonder or latest greatest radio song. But given the fact that the price scale per song is break even with a CD, I don't get it... I'll purchase and encode myself. Can I tell the difference between my MP3's and CD's? Sometimes, not often to be honest. But someday in the future I figure there's a reasonable chance that I'll have a system where I can.
iTunes, Napster, etc... you're selling us less, charge us less!
Personally, I'll start paying for downloads when the price point is 1/3-1/4 that of a purchased CD, or when I have the option to download a lossless version. I'd prefer the later.
I have been converted after being very impressed with their SlimX 350 mp3 cd player. iRiver is IMHO the greatest music-playing-device-company in the world.
"Get a component MD deck and you get optical in and out."
But that's expensive, and my rack already has a dedicated pc with an 8-channel 24/96 sound card.
Are you sure you can disable SCMS on your component deck? Doesn't that defeat the purpose of the "mini" in "minidisc?"
"Makes sense when you consider their intended use."
It doesn't make sense to me. The intended use is to deprive me of my artwork? Or to raise the barrier to entry into high-quality sound recording? Why isn't this the consumer's choice?
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Mini-Disc has been around for a very long time. All the while featuring 'built-in copyright protection'. ATRAC-3, sony's compression method of choice has always supported DRM. Really, it's not a big deal.
Check out the HHB Porta Disc. Pricey but the king of MD. It even sports a USB connection for exporting pure Wav-files to your computer! HHB Portadisc
I get these failures repeatedly, so I presume this is a design issue.
I would presume that flash players are literally hundreds of times as reliable as any "moving part" option.
Uh, and you MD player.
2. even with DRM, you can still lend/borrow friends' discs. Without needing a computer or a network.
Which is good, because hardly anyone has a computer with a network connection.
3. You don't need a computer to take advantage of Gb music storage. Believe or not, there are many people who don't own computers
How many people own an esoteric piece of hardware like an MD yet do not own a computer? I defy you to find one. Do not count yourself, you did not write your post on your stereo.
4. More hardware choice (in the long term) and easier hardware upgrades. Buy a newer player, use the old discs.
Sony seems to be the only vendor of merit for MD, so you actually are beholden to one merchant.
5. Less risk when transporting data. Walking around with a $7 minidisc is a lot less worrying than carrying a $250 player.
????
What is this risk? That I will get hit by a car? Who cares what happens to my music at that point???
False. See "accesories" anywhere iPods are sold.
NetMD players are smaller and lighter than even the iPod mini
False.
The Hi-MD walkman is the first to support PCM recording
No one cares, sorry.
I bet this is the new disc format that Sony are planning to use in their PSP portable game console.
You need to clarify what you are talking about. Sony Net MD units no longer use MusicMatch Jukebox as the new software is now SonicStage and it still incorporates the completely unreliable check-in and out system.
SonicStage, in my opinion, is the worst piece of software I have ever used. I nearly returned my MD unit because I received constant "recording session failed" errors for no apparent reason on MP3s I just ripped from CD for the purpose of transfering to MD. If it wasn't for M3U2SB, Nero Imagedrive and Simple Burner I would not have been able to transfer ANYTHING to my MD, the software is that buggy.
I managed to find out about the Nero Imagedrive trick from reading through the reams of complaints on Sony's own message board about Net MD; it has frustrated thousands, if not millions of people.
Please clarify what you mean by SonicStage.
Thanks.
I don't know how good their A/D is, but I've considered getting one for field & concert recordings. MiniDisc is not an option for me, due to cost and DRM restrictions.. Sony blew it.
free speach
Did you mean: free speech
well...that's the nail AND the coffin for this product.
I use to be a fan of minidisc....until I came across my iPod. I should spend some time converting my minidisc collection to mp3/ogg for archival purposes
If they are anything like the minidisks with their totally anoying 'copyright protection' features then i really dont care.
its my music, i should be able to do as i please on my own equipment..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Another reader reader submitted some pictures and specifications (pdf).
Didn't realize jar jar was in our midst.
All these companies making players that will only play their (DRM) formats. We have MP3 walkmans, discmans, the ipod, Microsoft's newly announced thing. I'm waiting for someone to make something like an ipod that runs Linux, stores gigs of data like the ipod, and that I can compile xmms on to play whatever the hell audio format I want, as well as using it to store all my personal files to transfer from computer to computer via USB. Maybe like a Zaurus with massive HD capacity.
Dude, anyone who thinks that the iPod's expensive add-on 8KHz Mono abomination is acceptable recording needs to get out more. And recording PCM is major because it is relatively non-lossy, compared to recording MP3.
Da Blog
most people here seem to be concerned with quantity over and above anything else. to my ear, and to most of my friends in the uk, mp3 in it`s current form sounds rubbish compared to atrac. that is, we prefer our music to sound good rather than be concerned about numbers.
also, most music colleges in the uk have adopted minidisc as a distribution format because it can be recorded on the fly. minidisc can be used to record live performances, demo`s, mixes, anything you like.
finally, i`m currently travelling round south america, and i have changed the battery on my minidisk only once in 2 months of listening.
so there.
is that MD media is no longer limited to strictly music material, using Sony proprietory format. Instead it uses FAT, and treats any type of data the same way, just like the rest of the world does.
Add the following factors:
(i) excellent price per GB. Beats the hell out of hard drive based players.
(ii) energy efficient. just check the specs of existing MD players, folks. A single set of baterries last something like 40-50 hours.
Of course, what's missing is the ability to choose some arbitrary compression format. Alas, we are still limited to ATRAC. Not that I have something against this format personally, but having the ability to do MP3 and AAC would be nice. Yet the latest reincarnation of ATRAC, ATRAC-S is quite good. Incidently, with 'high quality' level, you'll get about 8 hours on a new 1GB media.
What Sony really needs is to divorse the MD format from ATRAC. The first step is made: MD layout is no longer tied up to specific format, but uses FAT, general data format. So we can store some general data on MD. Just imagine if Sony adds some other decoders. This will literally blow away most of the players. Yet even with only ATRAC decoder available, I still expect revitilized interest in this format. Seems like Sony is on a right track. Not just higher density MD, but moving to 'general purposes media' with excellent characteristics.
> Are you sure you can disable SCMS on your component deck?
No, I'm sure you CAN'T disable SCMS. But you can can play back digital and if you record something through the mic plug it should be tagged as an original, allowing you to make at least one generation of copies. You can also buy little boxes that allow you to reset the SCMS bits to anything you like. Those work for CD, DVD, MD, DAT and whatever they cook up next, so long as it uses SCMS over s/pidf.
> The intended use is to deprive me of my artwork?
Yes. And it sucks
> Or to raise the barrier to entry into high-quality sound recording?.
Exactly. When you buy consumer electronics you are supposed to CONSUME, not produce. Therefore any copying must be 'stealing' their precious 'content.' To produce music you are supposed to fork over the money for professional equipment. (Or at least prosumer.)
Hint: when they call it "content" it usually contains zero quality.
Democrat delenda est
I bought my wife a Net MD for christmas last year, based on the fact that it "supported MP3 format" -- stupid, stupid, stupid.
Had I done some research, I would have realized that MP3 support is NOT native. In fact, you need to run OpenMG jukebox, which is about the sorriest excuse for a "music library manager" I've ever seen. It is slow, bloated, crashes constantly, and is positively littered with Engrish in both the application and documentation.
In a nutshell, we made 5 MD "mixes", and that's it. The thing's too much of a pain in the ass to use on a regular basis.
What happened to the Sony that was the undisputed king of technology just a few short years ago??
Actually, I'd like to point something out. While this device will work just fine for file storage in Linux using Mass Storage Device modules, transferring audio in ATRAC format (in listenable form) is not really supported in Linux now. So far, NetMD does not work in Linux (although there are multiple projects working on it). If somebody knows that the USB Mass Storage Device setup will solve this problem (copying audio via Sony's proprietary NetMD), please correct me.
Sony plans to release FOUR new devices in April. They are expected to cost $200 for the MZ-NH600D, $250 for the MZ-NHF800, $300 for the MZ-NH900, and $400 for the MZ-NH1, with Hi-MD blanks costing about $7. They are also planning to release a bookshelf system, the LAM-X1.
There are a few concept ideas also. Look here (Japanese) to see a bunch of other Hi-MD items, including a Hi-MD Camera!
Click here for a translated (Babelfish) document with a bit of technical information.
i'd rather store DivX rips on cute little MiniDiscs than on a full blown CDROM disc. i'd like to see 1gb minidiscs as a replacement for VHS, actually *cough* beta *cough*
SIGERR: laziness exceeds quota
Since the only time I get to listen to music is in my car, I cannot tell the diference at all between a prerecorded CD or 128k mp3. The road noise, A/C etc all drown out the fine details.
Vote Quimby!
-- less than $200
-- 45 hours of music, roughly equivalent to the "800" songs the mini-iPod claims
-- Sony quality & style
-- replaceable media
-- small size
-- and judging from the current MD players the battery life will likely be measured in days instead of hours
Only thing that concerns me is the interface: with 45 hours of music it better have some sort of smart iPod technology to catagorize the songs accordingly, which I'm sure it will considering it's Sony. According to the pdf it sounds like the DRM is exactly like the current copy-right protection in current Net MD devices and will only pertain to transferring data off the Hi-MD media, so all your current mp3s should transfer to the device fine.
Of all the new mp3 players recently released this is the one I'll be watching the closest.
The specs pdf doesn't discuss the players at all, but does reveal that the current MDs are only 177mB (that it?) and that you can format current MD media to a new "Hi-MD" format and double the size to 340mB, great if you already have MDs. The new Hi-MD also transfers ~7x faster, 10mb/sec instead of the current 1.25mb/sec, so it should have to spin less to load new songs into cache, further increasing battery life.
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
From the specs:
I guess Sony aren't bothered by Microsoft enforcing their FAT patents, but perhaps it will block the manufacture of no-brand MDs? I wonder if Sony thought of that, or whether they chose FAT for its ubiquity alone.
Probably the latter; just a thought.
http://www.minidisct.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&t hreadid=20006
Mod this up, way up. Pictures, links to the best info + more. Go minidisc!
Use Minidisc? Join the Minidisc.org forums.
> The whole time I've had my iPod I've only lost charge twice, once when I hadn't plugged it in for a week and once while up in the mountains hiking
That's exactly why I bought a net-MD. I was planning a 2 week camping trip in Kenya. For half the cost of an iPod, I got a "sports" MD. No worries about battery life, no worries about finding a 120v recharger in the middle of the Mara, no worries about dust and sand.
And the DRM is no problem if your collection is already MP3. Their transfer program doesn't do anything to the source file, I can copy each MP3 to as many disks as I want. Only drawback is that you can't copy stuff you recorded on the MD back onto the computer. But the iPod doesn't record at all, so that's still a win for MD. With an Ipod I wouldn't have the recording of those Masai tribal songs...
I used original minidisc a lot for theatre and radio stuff... it was like a CD, only you could re-arrange and delete/copy files on the fly...
I agree if you want a cheap mp3 player, you cant beat those 30$ mp3/cd deaks.
But radio and some theatres still use these, as they've been smaller and easier to use in live situations then many hard disc based systems.
all imho, of course
Solid state reliable, cheap (for the small ones) and getting cheaper for the big ones, already less per MB than floppies, and drivers installed by default in every OS that counts (Linux, MacOS, and Windows 2000+)
I am amazed that everyone here is slamming Sony for this announcement. You all just don't get it, do you?
Everyone is comparing MD with iPods and Rios. If all you care about is PLAYING sound that others have created for you, then no, there doesn't seem to be a good reason for Hi-MD to exist.
The difference can be summed up in two words: LIVE RECORDING.
Minidisc is an awesome format for live recording. CD-quality sound in a random-access format that is very small (ergo portable and Unobtrusive, which is more important than you might think), and on a media that is highly durable and editable/re-writable. It's very handy in a lot of situations. Class notes. Family reunions. Audition recordings for musicians (I have done these for three local violinists in my area). I also have some minidisc recordings of major events in recent history via FM radio.
The only major problem (until now) was that uploading sound from MD to computer had to be done in real-time, analog only. With Hi-MD, this last problem has been corrected. I would buy one of these units if ONLY for that reason. The fact that additional features have been added - octuple-length recording times, data transfer, etc - is just a big whopping bonus as far as I'm concerned.
No one interested in live recording would seriously consider any of the mp3 players on the market, including iPod. Removable media, while not necessarily desirable for mp3 deadheads who HAVE to have their WHOLE music collection on them at all times, is a must for those who do live recording.
And about this DRM business: It has already existed in MD and is and will always be easily circumventable. Just record tracks via analog line-in. No noticable sound difference. You can record anything you want from any device that has a headphone jack and there is no DRM technology involved whatsoever. Ditto for mic recordings.
-JD
MD is magneto-optical - it's read like a CD or DVD; low-power laser light reflects (or doesn't) to get 0/1.
MD recorded magnetically - a high-power laser heats spots to the point where they can be
magnetically altered to be reflective or not.
Materials that have this property are fascinating... see http://www.minidisc.org/minidisc_faq.html#_q8
Are there any good mp3 players out there that record at 64kbs? That'd make a nice bootlegging machine.
For the record, I am hella glad that Sony is doing this. I have always said the form factor was perfect, that they just needed to make "The MiniDisc DVD" to create a winner. Software crippling sucks, but there are ALWAYS workarounds for the motivated.
Yes, IAASW... I am a Sony Whore.
I've got a bad attitude and karma to burn. Go ahead. Mod me down.
I have been wondering for awhile why laptops dont have minidisc drives instead of regular cdroms. sure their are no mini discs with data on them now but couldn't this help to make laptops smaller. My favorit small laptop from old times now is the toshiba portege 3020 but unfortunatly doesn't have a cdrom which makes it alot harder to install OSes or move files across to it. wouldn't mini disc drives in laptops help to make them smaller and ligher?
i have had a minidisc player for a few years. my first one was a netmd recorder, but my computer couldnt support it so i just hooked the md recorder to my cd player and hit record. then i got a computer and found i hated netmd, so i got a SHARP dr7, and gave the netmd recorder to a friend. as a matter of fact quite a few of my friends got netmds because tahy liked the convinence of havinga small music player, cheap media and INSANE battery life. i personaly dont like the iPod because of the battery (8 hours life and after a few years you have to get it professionally replaced). with most md players today you get about 40 hours battery life on one AA or rechargable AA. all this being said, i wouldnt mind having an iPod. the fact that i can get a seven dollar disc and put all the albums by steely dan on it and still have room to spare to put lyrics and album art on it is just cool! the discs are very durable, i remeber playing frisbee with one and then stomping on it while twisting my foot! and all i had to do was dust it off and put it back in my md player. can you do that with a cd or flash memory card? the sound quality from my dr7 is stunning! when there is no music playing you cant hear ANYTHING, i cant hear the noise floor!
I have a stack of miniCD-Rs, the size of a minidisc (but thinner and lighter, of course), that cost $0.25ea, hold 120MB, work in all standard CD(CD-R) players/burners. Who's got my MP3 miniDiscman?
--
make install -not war
Secondly, the world is bigger than just the US; in the UK, everyone and their brother still sells them like hotcakes.
Third of Nine
This is why I'm inclined to get a Rio Karma. I can use MP3 or OGG encoding at different bitrates to get just the right level of compression. And for the albums and recordings that I know I will be listening to a bunch, I can transfer them as FLAC. It is very customizable for different listening conditions and source recordings.
I only wish that the Karma was at 40GB. Considering that a Phish concert can span 10 CD's, the 18.5 GB of the Karma won't hold too many FLAC's at a time.
That's why media pros who need the compromises in the MiniDisc format (size, cost, flexibility, adequate quality, random access) use the HHB portable: USB transfer out, XLR mic/line jacks, and decent A/D conversion.
Damn those pesky terrorists
Hi-MD will allow recordings made with the Mic-in port to be uploaded to your PC. It seems at the moment recordings made with the normal Line-In will still not allow uploading, though. Possibly because the line-in is optical/analog hybrid. But I think there should be flags for optical recordings and anlog should be allowed upload if Sony is going to be so unwavering in there being some restriction.
There is no restriction saying you have to use a low bitrate for a transferrable recording thankfully.
All this is in the press releases.
right. 230mb for a standard MD medium. i had researched this extensively, and found only one instance of the fabled SCSI data MD drive.
SIGERR: laziness exceeds quota